


Up On the Mountaintop

by CleotheDreamer



Series: Character Exploration One-shots [4]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Because that's what the Gaang is, Character Study, Child Soldiers, Drabble, Gen, Introspection, One Shot, Ouch, Self-Doubt, Toph Beifong-centric, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:08:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24123361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CleotheDreamer/pseuds/CleotheDreamer
Summary: She hates pity, has lived through so many things, but somehow that’s always the worst.In which Toph has doubts and insecurities.
Relationships: Toph Beifong & The Gaang
Series: Character Exploration One-shots [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1646509
Comments: 2
Kudos: 54





	Up On the Mountaintop

**Author's Note:**

> This one isn't really narrative poetry like the others in this series, but it's still vaguely poetic. Mainly because of the length and topic, but anyway, the promised Toph one-shot has arrived! This is coming to you from a half-asleep person who hasn't been physically capable of reading much for nearly two weeks, so please tell me if I have any mistakes! Thanks! Luv y'all! <3

She is blind and she has felt that way before, no matter how hard she wishes she had always been able to see like this: better than those with clear eyes and colors and things she secretly prayed for at age 3, learning of ableism and frailty.

She used to be scared of the things she couldn’t see, though she doesn’t like to admit it. The badger moles rode the Earth to her like gods offering their blessing and she thinks that maybe her powers come from the spirits – that maybe something out there pitied her enough to make something good out of her bad.

She hates pity, has lived through so many things, but somehow that’s always the worst. Even when she’s running from murderous soldiers and locked up in Fire Nation jails, pity always stings sharpest.

But her feet burn like paper curling from the heat of a flame until she cannot see the world anymore and she thinks that maybe people are right to pity the blind.

It is so very terrifying to be lost without the faintest of lights to guide you. She’d forgotten what it feels like to not know even the barest hints of where she is.

Sometimes, it feels as though she’s defined by all the things she cannot do even though she is capable of things no one else is. As though she has to prove herself to gain even an ounce of respect.

And she does – prove herself, that is.

Over and over and over again, but sometimes it’s tiring. She wishes she could just be enough without having to _show_ that she is useful.

That she is not defined by her blindness.

So she yells, perhaps to show others that she isn’t delicate or perhaps to show herself. She stomps her feet; asserts her influence over the material world to create some physical proof of her existence.

She tries to think about what light meant when it wasn’t just heat beating down upon her skin, peeling layer after layer until it stings and turns a color she can’t see – though she hears that sunburns are red.

She doesn't know what that looks like.

(She hears it's warm – hot – and she wonders if fire is also red. Perhaps it's black – the absence of light, of sight. A destructive force like fire could only begin to induce terror if it has some aspect of darkness.

But she also hears that fire is light and she wonders if she'll ever know which one is more dangerous.)

She’s strong – can dig her hands into the Earth and stop its orbit with her bare fists. When people see her – see with eyes that work like they’re supposed to – they’re surprised.

Astonished.

She wishes they could look at her and expect it: the tidal waves pouring from her grimy fingernails.

Just as she is a child, she is also an earthquake of a woman puncturing the sky with mountaintops she tears from the ground.

She can carve cliffs into the face of the earth just as easily as she could kill. She's glad she can't see her hands because she sometimes feels them shake and twitch.

She doesn't want the additional proof of her weakness.

She has never killed, but she has felt heartbeats putter out beneath her feet all the same. She thinks it's better not to share and wonders if blindness is just ignorance.

In many ways, it's hard to think of herself as blind.

Is it truly blindness to see in the way she does? Blindness is terrifying – her feet bubbling with heat – but her hands can still feel the way Aang hits the wall and muffles his screams into his hands. She can still hear Katara's angry, bitter sobs.

She is still aware of her own terrified shaking and she wonders if this is war: this endless hopelessness that nothing will ever change despite how stubbornly their group pushes forward.

She thinks it's ironic that people consider Earth stubborn and unmoving – as if Earth means tradition and Air means progress. Perhaps it's true, but Aang seems the one most set in the past – in revisiting and following places and customs long gone. She seems the most carefree out of all of them.

Maybe Earth is just steady – able to stand tall through change where water trickles into nothing and fire putters out. Perhaps Earth and Air are more alike than they are given credit for, being the only elements so capable of surviving intact after disasters.

Changed, but intact.

She went to war when she was 12, so she has to be strong enough to stand up on her own. Despite the soreness of her feet, she knows that, come conflict, she will need to fight back. But, even without burnt feet, to survive war at any age you have to be strong.

So, she trains each day and screams her will to the world as if it will change from the minuscule weight of her voice.

Her fists and feet are heavy, though, even if they are small. She breaks things with them. It's what she does best. They are perhaps the only things she has to offer.

She wonders if that will be enough – to fix things.

She realizes that some things have to break before they can be fixed.

(She realizes, but she cannot accept it. She hates that there is a difference.)

**Author's Note:**

> The one person I know who is blind is not terrified of not seeing, but I can guarantee that most of us would be terrified if we suddenly lost our sight. Toph isn't blind in the same way a blind person is. She has her own version of sight. Sure, she can't see in the same way as the rest of the world, but the rest of the world also can't see what she can so it's a mutual difference. If she lost her version of sight, she'd be terrified just like we would if we lost our vision and that makes sense. She is not used to being truly sightless, so she won't have the same perspective about it as real-life blind people. She's probably terrified to go back to what she used to be.
> 
> Anyway, if any of Toph's perspective about blindness offends you, please let me know so I can fix it!


End file.
